The Bay Area is such a fabulously dog-friendly environment. There are dog beaches and parks galore, plus dog day events at baseball parks and museums. We have some of the most progressive humane societies and shelters in the nation with vibrant training and behavior programs, oodles of rescue groups, and good trainers with fantastic credentials in great abundance. We Bay Area folk have a ton of resources and care about dogs a whole heck of a lot.
I guess that is why I’m so taken aback when I encounter locals who don’t seem to know what constitutes normal dog behavior and effective training methods. This week, in a 24-hour period, I witnessed three incidents in which the dogs in question displayed normal (if undesirable to the handler) dog behavior. The humans all reacted in ways that were completely ineffective at stopping the “offending” behavior, probably stress-inducing for the dogs, and, worst of all, potentially damaging to the long-term relationship between dog and handler.
Incident number one happened in my neighborhood. There is a dog I run into frequently while walking my dogs. He is somewhat dog-reactive so he stiffens up, hackles raised high, and growls at my dogs every single time we pass on the street. His body language and behavior clearly show that he is uncomfortable in the presence of other dogs. His owner generally gets angry with him for growling at us, so she yells at him, and often she grabs him by the collar and kind of shakes him, too. The other day she went so far as to lift his front feet off of the ground while scolding him for growling and lunging at us.
Here’s the problem: If the dog is uncomfortable with our approach, punishing him for letting all of us know isn’t going to make him feel any better about us. Quite the opposite, actually. It also doesn’t give him any guidance or clue as to how she’d rather he behave.
My quick advice for this woman would be to keep her dog at a distance from other dogs, far enough away that he is non-reactive but close enough that he can still see them. Then reward him for non-reaction, giving him a reason to look forward to seeing other dogs rather than one more reason to dread their approach. Also, she could proactively teach him what behavior she’d prefer. How about training him to sit facing her when dogs come into his (dis)comfort zone? Then give him a big smile and a fun reward for showing such calm restraint in a situation that clearly makes him aroused and/or stressed.
In the other two incidents, dogs were with professional dog walkers, not their own guardians. People, please vet your dog walkers carefully. The entire point of hiring someone to take care of your dog midday is for her to have a good time and get some exercise and companionship while you’re away. It’s tragic when dog walkers aren’t very nice to their clients, and I see it pretty much every time I go to the dog park.
In one incident I could not even tell why the dog in question was being pinned by the dog walker. I saw nothing out of the ordinary going on. The man did mention that the dog was a ball thief, so perhaps he had been hounding another dog for the coveted tennis ball, however there was no scuffle, nor even any stiff body language. Regardless, pinning is a ridiculous exercise based on the now debunked “knowledge” that wolves physically pin their subordinates. They don’t. Plus dogs aren’t wolves and people are neither dogs nor wolves.
In the final incident, a medium-sized adult female dog very appropriately shunned the advances of a large, overly-exuberant, adolescent Labrador. She snapped him off twice in what was a very clear, “No thank you, mind your manners!” communication. Which he heeded and frankly needed; it was an important learning moment for him.
Unfortunately, her dog walker, who was about 70 feet away, marched right up to this lovely, socially appropriate dog, berating her all the way, and pinned her by the neck while telling her “no fighting.” Aside from the fact that, as I stated above, pinning is not an actual canine communication tool, this man’s timing was atrocious! The “crime” was long past by the time he caught up to the dog. When he pinned her she was calmly strolling, getting along just fine with the Labrador and several other dogs all around her. From her standpoint it must have seemed a random act of violence on the part of her caretaker. Not much fun, and all for doing exactly what an adult bitch should do when accosted by a rude young’un.
We’ve got to stop seeing normal dog behavior as bad. This doesn’t mean that behavior we don’t like simply must be tolerated; there are normal things dogs do that we humans find irritating, and that’s where good training and communication come in. Teach your dog exactly how you’d like her to behave and reward her for all the times she gets it right.
Most of the time our dogs are behaving beautifully and we never even bother to tell them how delighted we are to have them in our lives. Remember that our canine compansions aren’t our adversaries, they’re our best friends.
Kelly Gorman Dunbar is Director of the Center for Applied Animal Behavior, where she recruits and trains the instructors for the Dunbar family business, SIRIUS® Puppy & Dog Training. She is the creator of the SIRIUS Sniffers scent-detection program, and is in the process of bringing the French sport of cavage (truffle hunting) to the US. Kelly is also Founder and President of Open Paw and consults on various matters.
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